Can Body Language Be Learned?

Ten minutes after I meet with a coaching client for the first time, the client is facing my video camera for 60 to 90 seconds. Then we watch the video together. Differently from in real life and because we have modern technology, I can separate the impression—and the client’s image—from the spoken words. I simply turn the speakers off so I don’t get influenced by the video’s verbal content and context. This is a powerful experience, one that provides rich information. In most cases a client can use that information for improving job interview skills and then can apply the newly learned skills during a job interview. Most people are awestruck by their video experience. In less than two minutes, people can see for themselves how they’re perceived by others—something they couldn’t have known before.

Albert Mehrabian, currently UCLA professor emeritus of psychology, published his findings on inconsistent communication of feelings and attitudes and on the relative importance of verbal messages and nonverbal messages. He devised what’s known as the 55%-38%-7% rule. Professor Mehrabian’s basic tenet is that when we communicate with other people, we’re being judged to the extent of 55% by our nonverbal behavior such as body language and facial expression, 38% by our tone of voice, and only the remaining 7% by the actual words we speak and their context. Moreover, if the words we use are incongruent with our body language and tonality, then the other person tends to believe more in what he sees and hears and less in the meaning of the words.

When we interview, our body language says a lot about us and about our emotional state; and poor body language often sends the message that we’re stressed or fearful. But even before the interview interaction begins, the interviewer looks at your face, your hair, your clothes, and the image you’re projecting. Thus, he forms an opinion about you before you’ve even had a chance to formally meet.

The interviewer observes your body language and interprets it quickly, knowing at once whether you’re scared, passive, under- qualified, or something else. If you say the wrong thing, the interviewer can forgive that, but if your body language says something different from what you actually say—for example, you say you’re a person who works well in stressful situations, but your body language betrays the fact that you’re indeed stressed; or, for another example, you say you’re confident, but your body language again betrays the fact that you’re not—well, those are things an interviewer knows you can’t change.

Following are a few body language mistakes to avoid during a job interview.

·         Crossing your arms, which suggests you’re either overconfident or uncomfortable

·         Lack of eye contact, especially while the interviewer is talking

·         Not smiling, which makes you appear nervous or unfriendly

·         Hiding your hands, because the interviewer will want to interpret how open and honest you are by looking at your hands

The only way to improve correspondence between the words you say and what your body language says is to prepare for the interview and practice, practice, and practice some more. It’s best to practice interviewing with someone who can point out to you your areas of deficiency and can guide you in making improvements.

While on a job interview, you’re nothing other than an actor onstage. Just think about how much preparation it takes to perform on Broadway.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

Can Body Language Be Learned?

Ten minutes after I meet with a coaching client for the first time, the client is facing my video camera for 60 to 90 seconds. Then we watch the video together. Differently from in real life and because we have modern technology, I can separate the impression—and the client’s image—from the spoken words. I simply turn the speakers off so I don’t get influenced by the video’s verbal content and context. This is a powerful experience, one that provides rich information. In most cases a client can use that information for improving job interview skills and then can apply the newly learned skills during a job interview. Most people are awestruck by their video experience. In less than two minutes, people can see for themselves how they’re perceived by others—something they couldn’t have known before.

Albert Mehrabian, currently UCLA professor emeritus of psychology, published his findings on inconsistent communication of feelings and attitudes and on the relative importance of verbal messages and nonverbal messages. He devised what’s known as the 55%-38%-7% rule. Professor Mehrabian’s basic tenet is that when we communicate with other people, we’re being judged to the extent of 55% by our nonverbal behavior such as body language and facial expression, 38% by our tone of voice, and only the remaining 7% by the actual words we speak and their context. Moreover, if the words we use are incongruent with our body language and tonality, then the other person tends to believe more in what he sees and hears and less in the meaning of the words.

When we interview, our body language says a lot about us and about our emotional state; and poor body language often sends the message that we’re stressed or fearful. But even before the interview interaction begins, the interviewer looks at your face, your hair, your clothes, and the image you’re projecting. Thus, he forms an opinion about you before you’ve even had a chance to formally meet.

The interviewer observes your body language and interprets it quickly, knowing at once whether you’re scared, passive, underqualified, or something else. If you say the wrong thing, the interviewer can forgive that, but if your body language says something different from what you actually say—for example, you say you’re a person who works well in stressful situations, but your body language betrays the fact that you’re indeed stressed; or, for another example, you say you’re confident, but your body language again betrays the fact that you’re not—well, those are things an interviewer knows you can’t change.

Following are a few body language mistakes to avoid during a job interview.

• Crossing your arms, which suggests you’re either overconfident or uncomfortable

·         Lack of eye contact, especially while the interviewer is talking

·         Not smiling, which makes you appear nervous or unfriendly

·         Hiding your hands, because the interviewer will want to interpret how open and honest you are by looking at your hands

The only way to improve correspondence between the words you say and what your body language says is to prepare for the interview and practice, practice, and practice some more. It’s best to practice interviewing with someone who can point out to you your areas of deficiency and can guide you in making improvements.

While on a job interview, you’re nothing other than an actor onstage. Just think about how much preparation it takes to perform on Broadway.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

How the Illogical Process of Hiring Can Help YOU

So, finally, you receive a call to schedule an interview.

All your efforts have paid off. A person calls you to schedule another interview. This is a huge compliment! You were selected from dozens or, at times, hundreds of people who applied for the very same position. You typically feel elated on one hand and apprehensive on the other. The reason is clear. You know that the real test lies in the interview process.

Even if you think you interview well (because you’ve gotten jobs in the past!), the interview represents a big challenge. Over the past several years, the business climate has changed dramatically, and at the same time, the market has gotten flooded with highly qualified candidates. Interviewing is a skill that can be improved through hard work and preparation. There are so many applicants for only one opening that the process has become extremely competitive. You need to outshine your competition. Unless you kept your job search skills honed in on job market developments, you’ll most likely need to improve in this area.

So, what to do? You can do your own research and preparation via the Internet. Millions do so, but that process can take weeks or even months. Instead, you could hire a career coach! The career coach’s job is to prepare you for the upcoming competition. Such coaching will shorten your search as well as teach you how to do things right and how to avoid making costly or even, at times, fatal mistakes. The coach might also assist you in negotiating a better compensation package, which will more than make up for what you paid for coaching services.

Think of it in terms of sports: All professional athletes have coaches even though professional athletes are highly skilled. Why is this? Since the coach has no bias, he will point out to you not only your strong points but also your areas needing improvement. He will guide you to attainment of your goal.

What’s important to the hiring manager?

A hiring manager considers several factors. For example, he will review your professional background and your career progression. He’s also going to question your accomplishments as described on your resume. Be prepared to elaborate on those accomplishments once prompted in your interview. In addition, of course, your education and credentials will likely weigh heavily.

It is a huge plus for you if you were referred by a trusted source. Why is that? It’s because the roles in the interview process are well defined: This is a transaction between you and the hiring manager. You are tantamount to a salesperson with the intent to sell yourself. The hiring manager is the buyer. His job is to select among several salesperson candidates. He is not inclined to buy everything the salesperson wants to sell. However, if a trusted person recommended you, then the hiring manager’s scrutiny is significantly minimized, thus dramatically increasing your chances of being hired.

What happens at an interview?

In preparing for a big interview, it might be helpful to take on the mind-set of someone who has just finished one. After an interview is over, you will have many questions in your mind: How did you do? Were you able to provide the right answers? Defend your liabilities? And convince the hiring manager that in your past positions you not only did what he needs done but, more important, also did it successfully? Was that job performance successful because you said so? Or because it was recognized by others? Recognition by others is what convinces a hiring manager that you performed with distinction.

Once the interview is over, you must follow up. Your thank-you letter should address any questions the interviewer may have about your candidacy. It’s up to you to find out what they are. When you’re asked, “So, do you have any questions for me?” ask the interviewer about your candidacy for the position. After all of this, the only big issue remaining to be addressed is whether you’d fit harmoniously into the organization. This fit issue has a lot to do with the chemistry between a candidate and a hiring manager.

So, why is the hiring process illogical?

As you can see, today’s hiring process is lengthy. A candidate uses logic throughout the application process, but the involvement of many people over such a long time can sometimes lead to an illogical result. Furthermore, in most of the cases of rejection, the truth is not revealed to the candidate because of the potential trigger of a lawsuit. Therefore, the only logical conclusion from the candidate’s point of view is that the process is illogical. However, an understanding of the entire process can equip you and help you through.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

The Trauma of Unemployment

The emotional stress associated with unemployment is understood only by those who are unemployed. Often, even people closely associated with the unemployed such as spouses or other family members don’t fathom the emotional pressure and pain that settles in on those without sources of income and places to go to called work.

Unfortunately, some jobless people stay in transition for a long time. Today the main reason is usually the current economic condition, but it isn’t the reason all the time. In fact, some people get quickly transplanted into new jobs, but others get held back due to their lack of a solid plan and inability to make decisions. Have you noticed that some people procrastinate decision making and agonize even over the simplest kinds of decisions? For example, some people take forever to make a menu choice in a restaurant, while others wait impatiently for the last person to decide. Or, maybe you had a boss who couldn’t make even ordinary decisions and who constantly maneuvered just to avoid the need to make the decision? There are reasons that such phenomena exist and I’m certainly not competent to attempt to provide those reasons, but through my work as a career coach I see such indecision at times with my clients.

So, how can a career coach help with such issues? Well, it’s not the job of the career coach to conduct a session like a psychologist would. And sometimes even psychologists don’t know how to or neither prepared nor qualified to. A career coach, though, can at least help narrow down the choices and assist in the decision-making process by, say, guiding clients to the right personality assessment tests, or by listening carefully to clients’ affinities or certain successes from the past, or, if appropriate, by guiding clients to other recommended professionals with advanced degrees like Ph.D.’s who are expert in counseling regarding career, job search, and workplace issues.

Honestly, most people don’t know what they want in terms of a job unless they see it in context. People can’t predict the advantages and disadvantages of a profession or a job unless they can somehow identify with it. Perhaps a friend or someone else can tell them the good, the bad, and the ugly about it. And even in that case, the future is highly unpredictable. I’m sure that at one time or another, you asked someone for an opinion of the company the person worked at. And I’m equally sure you received an answer. But was that answer a valid one? Or was it only that person’s opinion about the boss? Certainly, if the boss treats us nicely, we’ll say the entire company is great! And if the opposite is true, the entire company stinks! Everything’s always relative, isn’t it.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

Is Fear a Part of Your Professional Life?

During my work with job seekers or those contemplating a job/career change, I evaluate the amount of fear that drives—or paralyzes—my clients. To some extent, all of them exhibit fear originated by some threat—or so they perceive. For a person out of a job, that feeling is not only a perception but also, unfortunately, a reality. The normal human body has a built-in mechanism to protect itself from such an emotion by either confronting it or running away from it. It’s also known as the fight-or-flight response. In more-extreme situations, such fear leads to anxiety, but I’ll let a mental-health professional explain that one.

Conversely, a few clients indeed become energized by fear resulting from lack of employment. Their adrenaline levels rise sharply, and they’re ready to attack. They see opportunities coming out of this employment change, and nothing stops them from getting to their next assignment. They exhibit a go-getter mentality and thrive on even small incremental successes. However, the majority of those I see react to their unknown futures by clamming up and thus thinking they’re protecting themselves during this vulnerable stage of their life. I vividly remember my own situation during a transition. My entire attitude could have been described as, “The answer is no, so what’s your question?” It’s a shame that our emotions and our logic are not always congruent.

In working with people who at times seem paralyzed due to their new, jobless reality, I try to clearly understand what’s behind the obvious fact that they don’t have jobs. That understanding is typically complex and intertwined with other, tangled elements. For example, embarrassment vis-à-vis family and friends, or self-humiliation as a parent unable to financially support a child who wants and deserves a college education, or, perhaps, aggravation of an already bad spousal relationship due to the inability to contribute to basic family finances for an extended period. And the list can go on and on.

In such a situation, my solution is to attempt to provide clients with (1) job search tools, (2) exposure to and familiarity with the job search process, (3) ample amounts of mock interviewing that increase clients’ knowledge and experience, and above all, (4) listening as they talk about their pain, and (5) an understanding of all they’re going through. Another tactic that’s proved successful is helping clients learn to divert their attention to something positive. For example, clients can learn to network effectively in order to establish new relationships with people who may be able to help them and whom in turn they can help. Clients can also learn to discuss volunteering opportunities that not only could lead to a job but in the interim could help job seekers mingle with other people. And, more often than not, volunteers could hear again the words “Thanks for a job well done”—a sentiment that for a while has probably been absent from their lives.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

So Tell Me, What Are Your Weaknesses?

This is one of the most dreaded interview questions, but if you understand the reason interviewers ask it and what they’re looking to uncover, you’ll see that you can certainly prepare for it.

The question about your weaknesses comes fairly soon after the interview begins and typically after such a question as, What are your accomplishments? or What are your strengths? Those two questions—if delivered correctly—let you sell yourself. They’re positive questions. Then—to contrast them—comes the awkward question about weaknesses. This question is not easy for the interviewer to ask, and it’s even more difficult for most people to answer.

So, what is the interviewer after? He wants to test several things: at face value, he hopes you won’t be so very honest as to provide a blatantly and hugely negative weakness that cancels your candidacy. An example would be an accountant who admits not liking working with numbers. The interviewer’s also going to weigh whether your answer could have a potential consequence in the future. You’ll also be watched carefully to determine whether the words you say and the communication your body language conveys are aligned or are contradictory.

Above all, the interviewer wants to see whether you present as an honest individual with a capability for healthy reasoning. This is probably the most important aspect of all. The reason is that a dishonest person or a person who does not exercise good judgment puts the hiring manager in danger. And that could have significant consequences not only for the candidate but also for the hiring manager, the hiring manager’s boss, and probably several others in the chain of command—all the way to the CEO, depending on the severity of the issue.

Two concrete examples come to mind. The first incident happened in 2008, when a French trader at major bank Société Général caused a loss of some $7 billion through an allegedly unauthorized trade. The trader was tried in court, but beyond that, several of his supervisors got dragged into the mess as well. The other example—which has just started unfolding through the media—is the alleged sexual misconduct of a coach at Penn State University. The issue caused the firing of a very well-respected and long-tenured university president; the school’s head coach, Joe Paterno, who had been revered for decades; and several other senior executives at the school.

So, the question remains: What is a good answer? Simply put, any answer that conveys honesty and healthy reasoning is a good answer. But to make your response even better, I suggest that between hearing the question and giving your answer, you pause for three to five seconds, take your eye away from the interviewer in order to pretend that you’re thinking of a reply, and then look the interviewer in the eyes because that kind of body language projects honesty. Then you should recount an incident that happened sometime in the past and that you’ve had a chance to correct since. Then add that moreover, you’re now so good at whatever the surmounted weakness was, that others in your organization seek out your advice on this subject. Turn lemon into lemonade.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert

How to Choose a Career Coach

I am a practicing career coach, and at every year-end, I summarize my annual accomplishments as measured by how many people I helped and what percentage of them landed. In practicing Six Sigma principles in my career coaching, one of the ones I especially take to heart is CIP, which stands for Continuous Improvement Process. That means, I keep asking myself what I could do better for my clients in the future.

Another of the principles is measurement of performance, and in this case, my own personal performance. While doing that I’m checking out my competition to see whether my fees are aligned with those of others in the same field. This is always an amazing exercise that constantly keeps me wondering. Basically, I, too, do what many people do when searching for help with their careers: seek assistance from a coach (1) to improve a résumé, (2) to acquire the skills needed for interview preparation, or (3) to get general career guidance. I simply Google some terms such as career coaching and add a state or city. Such searches typically result in several similar service providers.

And now the real fun—and frustration—start. If I were a job seeker who landed on a career coach’s Web site, naturally I would like to get some basic impressions and information. After all, how else could I make a judgment? The problem is that most Web sites are inferior and lacking. Many of them use stock photos of, say, a handshake or some attractive young people. I would rather see a picture of the person I may want to hire and work with.

Another major problem I see is that many if not most of the Web sites are overwhelming: the landing page is confusing and uninviting because it has way too much information and offers way too many options. Job seekers want simplicity, order, and guidance, yet typically, they encounter inordinate amounts of information. I think this is a classic case where simplicity is attractive and where less is more. Career coaches help job seekers communicate eloquently and concisely, But the evidence via most of such Web sites proves the contrary. I speak with many of my counterparts and business friends. Most of them admit that their Web sites are not producing as they expected.

So what should a job seeker look for when searching for a career coach? Above all, nothing beats personal recommendations. So, testimonials and LinkedIn recommendations are essential. But of course, career coaches would not post less-than-spectacular testimonials. Next, the Web site should be clear, not confusing, and easy to get answers from regarding the services provided, the ways the services would benefit a job seeker, how to contact the service provider directly by phone, where the service provider is operating from, and the fees for each type of service. Are there any contracts to be signed? any up-front fees to be paid? any short- or long-term commitments to be signed. These are some of the basic and elementary pieces of information a job seeker needs before making a decision.

For those of you who are job seekers or are contemplating making a job change, I suggest you gather as much competitive information as you can, definitely talk with your potential career coach before making your first appointment in order to make sure there’s good chemistry between the two of you. Make sure you’ll be getting what you need and that the fees are competitive. Don’t go by price alone, because then you may end up with the proverbial “You get what you pay for.” Don’t be too impressed with academic degrees, courses, and certificates. I myself once used a coach who had two master’s degrees, had taken many relevant courses, and displayed wallpaper-like posts of certificates. Regrettably, the individual’s services turned out to be worthless yet very costly! Do your homework. Make your decision. And make sure you feel good about it.

Posted via email from The Landing Expert